We’re a nervy (or at least reticent) bunch when it comes to telling friends and colleagues about our RA, and often for very good reason! There’s probably a post born every minute about this. Two good recent ones are from Squirrel and Laurie at ‘Frozen Woman’. I suppose it’s partly that we’ve all had bad reactions from someone, somewhere at some point, and it’s once bitten, twice shy, but also, as Squirrel mentioned in her post, that it’s really hard to get people to understand that you can be fine one minute and flaring the next … and then fine again soon after, if you’re lucky.

What one doesn’t often hear is what a good laugh it can be trying to explain things to folks wot don’t know.

Well today I had to explain to the ‘temp boss’ (‘the boss’, who knows all about the whole RA thing, being on maternity leave) that she was on permanent coffee duty today because I couldn’t get up and down the stairs terribly easily. Now I was probably muttering a bit because this whole RA thing shouldn’t make me feel embarrassed, but it does, and I was feeling guilty (another dumb and pointless emotion that shouldn’t be related to being ill!) about not being able to get my share of coffees, and temp boss’s hearing isn’t as acute as it might be, and she was probably only half listening because her mind was on getting coffees, but anyway, somehow my saying, ‘I won’t be able to get the coffees today because I’ve got a bad knee’ followed by an attempted explanation of flaring etc. got translated in her mind as ‘I can’t drink coffee today because I’ve got a bad knee’ and the pair of us ended up in fits of giggles at her vision of all this coffee pooling somehow in my knee and causing it to swell up.

Well, laughter is definitely therapeutic, so for once telling a colleague about RA turned out to be more therapeutic than painful! I think the pair of us will be referring to any future knee flares as ‘coffee on the knee’ from now on!

3rd Annual RA Blog Week, Author

Healthline Blog Awards 2017

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A bit about me

My name is not Pollyanna and I'm not a penguin. If you'd not worked out the last bit you should probably stop reading this and seek out a psychologist.

This is a blog about me and rheumatoid arthritis - sounds like fun, huh? Well I'm hoping it'll be a bit more fun than it sounds - hence the Pollyanna part. I'm going to try to stay positive about it and play 'Pollyanna's glad game' - finding reasons to be cheerful basically.

If you really want to know more see the 'About me' page.

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